Sophos NAC Advanced (discontinued) vs. ThreatLocker

Sophos Network Access Control would be most effective in an enterprise environment where there are many different groups of users, including guest users because it has the ability to block unauthorized users and control the access of guest users. It would not be well suited for an environment with less than 1000 users because as far as I know, the license requires at least that many users.

Incentivized

I have tested two of software besides ThreatLocker. ThreatLocker by far, was the easiest of the 3 to work with and setup. One of the companies' software was too complicated to run and setup. The other one lacked a lot of the features that ThreatLocker had. ThreatLocker came with many prebuilt template for common software and utilities, like Office365, putty, Firefox, Google, etc. It came with a bunch of prebuilt blocking/ringfencing rules for utilities like powershell, hyper-v psexec, and many others. This saves setup time. Unfortunately, ThreatLocker will let you download something from the MS Store, sometime it will let you execute and sometimes it won't. I would like to see this to be able to block the download from MS Store until ThreatLocker approves the download.

Incentivized

• Provides enforcement of security policies for Windows PCs
• As part of the Sophos Security Suite provides outstanding protection from viruses
• Uses a very nice web-based GUI

Incentivized

• Application Control
• Privileged Access Management
• Storage access control

Incentivized

• Customer support was basically non-existent during the time we needed it the most. This should be #1 priority for any company.
• Lack of support for Linux servers and Mac OS
• The reporting system relies on information provided by the agents
• Wide scale removal process needs some vast improvements. When using a batch removal script, it wrecks the NIC drivers to the point that they have to be removed and reinstalled.

Incentivized

• Ease of moving between organizations
• Removing agents from clients who depart
• Some UNC path definitions for local files and folders

Incentivized

ThreaLocker has done its job and has prevented malware from executing. It has stopped an encryption process once already. It has kept a user from going to a bad website. He tried twice and was wondering why he was getting an error message from ThreatLocker and ESET both.

Incentivized

ThreatLocker ease of use allows me to get the answers I need to any threats or denied action that ThreatLocker took. The "Unified Audit" is a great tool to show what is happening/executing on a user's computer or on a server. Unified Audit will allow to look at what steps a programs takes when it executes. It will show you if it calls on Powershell or what DLL's it is executing and many other things.

Incentivized

There is rarely ever an outage. I have seen slowness in ThreatLocker service. But that is very rare too!

Incentivized

ThreatLocker is always available. The admin's console loads very fast and report runs almost instantly. It does not interfere with operating system.

Incentivized

You can email, call or do online chat with tech support. I love their online chat. They are quick and friendly. Also, if you need to show them something, you can give the chat technician permission from your Chat box to allow the tech access to your computer. They also can pull out your admin console on their side. They can look at your "Unified Audit" log and see the same thing that you can. They have a good KnowledgeBase that you can look for answers. They have what is called "ThreatLocker University" where you can go through tutorials and take tests.

Incentivized

The owners and co-founders work with you through Zoom Meetings. They walk you through how to use and setup ThreatLocker. They also have webinars. You also can go through ThreatLocker University online training.

Incentivized

Using ThreatLocker University online training is very easy and informative. You take online tests to see how well you learned the material. It is great!

Incentivized

ThreatLocker is a family ran business. The owners, co-founders work with you to ensure you are up and running as quickly as possible. They went to ensure your success with ThreatLocker.

Incentivized

I have used Mcafee Antivirus Suite, Trend Micro, and Vipre Antivirus. I actually had more experience with Vipre than anything else so that is the one that I will be comparing it too. From what I remember, Vipre was more expensive but had better customer support. Other than that, they both do pretty much thing as well as what all the others do. I personally do not believe that any enterprise level antivirus solution is better than any other, it boils down to which one can your company afford, and which one fits best with your needs.

Incentivized

I honestly have not seen many other programs like Threatlocker so I do not have any to compare to. Auto-Elevate may be the closest, however I did not evaluate them as part of my decision. Threatlocker does do a great job at onboarding which made deploying, setting up, and troubleshooting the program a breeze

Incentivized

ThreatLocker is very easy to add new ThreatLocker agents on computers and servers. It is very easy to do. You can install an agent on a computer or server in about 2 minutes or less.

Incentivized

• Positive -- We were able to control guest users access
• Positive -- Using the entire Sophos Security Suite I only remember one major virus while I was with the company which saves on downtime, and IT man hours
• Negative -- The time we spent removing this, and reinstalling NIC drivers because the removal process crashed them cost the company in IT man hours.

Incentivized

• Too early on to tell, however, if ThreatLocker ends up blocking just one ransomware attack for any of our clients, I'd argue that it payed for itself.

Incentivized